


Wearing a coat of your paint

by Sylphid



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Hilda shows up for maybe two seconds, M/M, Painting, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-19 06:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22406485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylphid/pseuds/Sylphid
Summary: After endless pestering, Ignatz finally relents and takes Raphael painting with him. He doesn't think he's ever blushed more during a session.
Relationships: Raphael Kirsten/Ignatz Victor
Comments: 7
Kudos: 61





	Wearing a coat of your paint

**Author's Note:**

> Tooth-rotting fluff inbound. It's rough, so. Sorry 'bout that (つ﹏<)

Considering its name, Ignatz found that the “Common Room” on the second floor of the monastery was seldom disturbed, a fact he was most grateful for. It was just about the only place he could paint in peace when Fódlan’s harsh storms trapped him indoors. But peace never lasted long when a man with the size and intensity of a hurricane joined you, even if he did have the kindness of its eye.

Somehow, Raphael _finally_ convinced Ignatz to paint with him. It took hours to find a second easel, but tenacity and apparently some dead, art-appreciating monks took pity on the pair. 

“Are you sure you don’t want the easels facing the same way?” Ignatz asks, lining up the canvas and doing one last scan over his paints and brushes and palette. Their boards are still side-by-side, but they face in opposite directions; even so, they’re close enough that Ignatz has to actively suppress his jitters and keep his leg from bouncing. It wouldn’t be the first time his nerves had knocked art off an easel.

“Nah, I don’t want to bum myself out by seeing your super good art!” Raphael replies cheerily, sticking a thumbs-up through the crack between their canvases. 

Ignatz twitches his nose at the compliment and manages a weak smile. “You’re sweet, Raph, but I’m sure your first painting won’t be any worse than my first painting was.” He straightens up on his stool before continuing. “We’ll start with resin-based paints.”

“Resin?” Raphael cocks his head and peers at Ignatz with a questioning, wrinkled nose. “Like tree sap?”

Ignatz dabs his brush in an umber paint that’s sitting on his palette. “I use plant sap, but you’ve got the right idea! This kind of paint has three components: the pigment, which gives the paint its color; the binder--that plant sap--which holds the pigment together; and some sort of solvent that dissolves the previous two parts.”

The man across from him is rather occupied by the brush he twists in a seafoam green paint, the bristles dancing in a lake of light beryl. He still manages a response, though: “Why the heck would you want to dissolve the pigment? Doesn’t that mean it goes away?”

“Not quite,” Ignatz starts, tilting his head a little. “Dissolving the pigment and binder in water makes the paint easier to work with. Then, when the water evaporates from your canvas, you’re left with a slightly darker and slightly more durable combination of pigment and binder.”

Raphael abandons his brush in favor of dipping his thumb in the light green paint. “Wow,” he finally breathes out. “You know a lot about paint, Ig!”

Ignatz feels his face get a little warmer, and he twists his head ever so slightly to hide the blush that he’s sure is showing up. “I-I suppose… I mean, buying paint can get really expensive these days, so it helps if you know how to make your own.” He closes his eyes and sighs. “But be careful just sticking your fingers into the paint. After all, it’s a real pain to--”

He stops when he feels one of Raphael’s warm hands cup his face. Ignatz is too stunned to keep that bright green thumb from smearing a slanted line of seafoam onto his cheek.

“I-It’s a real pain to get off skin,” Ignatz stammers, eyeing the cold floor, which is arguably several fold less attractive than the bear directly in front of his face, though such a fact does nothing to calm his rosy cheeks.

Raphael raises his eyebrows in a mixture of surprise and confusion. “Oh.” Then he grins, the muscled lines of his neck growing taut along with the glee-stretched skin of his face. He offers Ignatz his brush. “Guess you gotta get me back!”

“Raph, I’m not going to--”

“Look, if you don’t do it, I’ll just do it myself,” he reasons, cleaning his brush in a cup of water before bringing it back toward his palette. He dips it into a deep burgundy, swirling it around for several seconds before lifting it back up. “Besides, you can’t be the only one that looks like a doofus!”

There’s an infinite moment where Raphael raises his brush towards his face. But before the brush reaches skin, and before Ignatz can stop himself, he clamps onto Raphael’s wrist. It stops Raphael, who once again raises an eyebrow.

_This is stupid. It’s not like I could overpower him if he kept going._

“I-If you’re that insistent… then let me do it. So you don’t get paint in your eyes.”

The blond man’s cheeks puff up with his wide smile. He holds out the brush to Ignatz, who takes it rather shakily. “I’m at your mercy, Ig.”

His hand hovers in front of Raphael’s cheeky, permanent grin. After a long breath out, he traces a thin line of crimson across the large man’s nose, starting and ending under his honeyed eyes. When he takes his hand away, he chances a look into those big eyes and realizes that they’re smiling just as much as his mouth is.

“Anyway--” Ignatz sputters, quickly backing away. “Shall we get started?”

“I’ll need my brush back, Ig!”

Ignatz looks down to his hand, where he’s still clutching the brush with Raphael’s dark red paint. “R-Right, my bad.” After handing it back, Ignatz figures they’re ready to begin. Of course, he’s neglected one last detail.

Raphael scratches his sideburns, peering at the blank canvas. “What am I supposed to paint?”

_Oh. Duh. A picture paints a thousand words, but I haven’t given him a story._

Ignatz thinks on it. It’s a rather loaded question--all artists have their muses, whether they’re places or people. “Well, when I paint, I try to capture the beauty around me, so that someday, someone else can see it and understand the beauty that I saw. If I go out into the fields, I want to be able to imbue the dynamic life of those rolling hills into the stillness of my canvas.”

He’s worded it a bit too abstractly, Ignatz realizes, based on the number of wrinkles that cover Raphael’s forehead. So, he amends his statement: “If it’s something I’d enjoy seeing again someday, then I try to capture it in my art. Does that make sense?”

“Oh, so paint something pretty!” Raphael replies practically. “Jeez, why didn’t you say so in the first place, Ig! I’ve _got_ this.” Without any further prompting, Raphael’s brush plunges into a cream colored paint. 

Ignatz wonders what it’s for, though he’s distracted when he sees Raphael’s tongue stick out ever so slightly from the corner of his lips. He chuckles before taking a moment to think on his own painting. A not-so-small part of him stares at Raphael and thinks _muse_ , but he quickly shakes his head. _Goddess, I can’t paint Raphael after I said all that._

He closes his eyes, inhaling deeply. _Maybe… the emerald-green grove that he and Raphael and Maya spent so much time in._ An old, well-worn place. He smells the wood sorrel, the chickweed he’d brew tea with, the wild basil that’d he use to flavor the massive boars Raphael brought back after disappearing for uncomfortably long bouts of time. He hears the badgers that scuttled into their moss-veiled homes, the coffee-furred rabbits that bobbed and bounded through their protective jungles of stinging nettle.

He remembers the sweet taste of windfall apples from the abandoned orchard on the outer edge of their little Eden. He remembers the sweet smile Raphael made when he took a bite, not caring a lick about the bits of apple that dribbled down his chin. An old, well-worn place, that swelled with warm, green memories.

Ignatz quickly gets into his boilerplate rhythm--paint, canvas, water; paint, canvas, water. Mix before it dries, or let it dry before layering more paint on. Saplings grow into tall, sturdy trees, and apples fall with the leaves.

“How’s it going over on your end, Raphael?” he interjects, eyes still trained on the canvas. “Can I sneak a peek?”

For once, the mountain of a man seems flustered. “About as well as you can expect for someone like me,” he mutters, his volume gone, replaced with a sheepish hand on the back of his neck and what looks like the beginning of a blush--painting his face past the burgundy that’s already there. “And I’d rather you not look until it’s done, if it’s that alright.”

“I’m sure it’s fine, Raphael,” Ignatz says, his eyes flickering with a cottony softness. “And of course. You don’t even have to show it to me at the end, if that makes you more comfortable.”

Color quickly returns to Raphael’s face as he puts on a toothy grin. “I _want_ you to see it. I just want to make sure to sell you on how beautiful it is,” he finishes with a wink. 

“A-Alright, you loon,” Ignatz stutters out, growing ever-so-aware of the searing heat in his chest and on his cheeks. _A stupid wink reduces me to the pining kid from five years ago. Goddess have mercy._ He smiles though, and he returns to his own painting.

Light filters in and out of the room at erratic intervals--rolling clouds catch the sun’s rays for minutes at a time. He’s not sure how long they sit on their stools, but he tries to keep track of how many times he catches himself staring at Raphael, who’s only this concentrated when he’s lifting weights. Trying to see how narrowly the man can squint his eyes in deep concentration is an embarrassingly adorable pastime.

He stops counting somewhere around the 37th time.

But when Raphael finally lets out a triumphant round of whoops and throws his brush into his water cup, he knows his staring has met its unfortunate end. Admittedly, he’d been layering more paint onto that memorable glade for some time now, but he couldn’t convince himself to let Raphael know he was done.

“I take it you’re finished?” Ignatz muses, placing his own brush into the water.

“Heck yeah!” he cheers, his eyes pulled shut by the width of his grin. “Wow, did we finish at the same time?”

_Well. Not quite._

Ignatz only laughs. “Just about, Raph. Just about.” He rests his elbow on his thigh, his chin in his hand. “So, do I get to see your masterpiece?” he asks.

Raphael picks up his canvas for second, staring at it with ruminative eyes before setting it back down. “You first, Ig.”

“Still nervous?” Ignatz sighs, smiling softly when Raphael only nods in reply. “There’s no reason to be, silly. But whatever makes you comfortable.” Gingerly, he rotates his easel, the wood creaking against the ground as the landscape is slowly revealed to Raphael’s widening eyes.

“T-That’s--” is all Raphael manages, his jaw hinged open. His eyes trace the greens of the flora, the earth tones of the fauna. Every little landmark, every layer of resin-grounded memories. “The apples--”

“--from the orchard, yeah,” Ignatz finishes, humming softly. “This is… a beauty that I wouldn’t mind seeing again and again.”

Raphael seems about to burst with joy, his eyes bleary and his lips pursed to keep them from trembling. He continues to stare for an awfully long amount of time. “Ig… can I--can I keep this?”

_K-Keep it?_ “You like it that much?” Ignatz says, his eyebrows finding a new home in his hair. The man across from him nods about five times, pauses, then nods another five times. “Then it’s yours,” Ignatz mumbles, smiling to himself behind his easel. 

When Raphael realizes that the end of this interaction means it’s his turn to share his painting, he pales a little. “My turn, huh?” He scratches the back of his head, scrunching up his nose.

“Only if you’re comfortable sharing, Raph.”

“I’ve gotta see this through!” Raphael declares, slamming his fist onto his leg. “Close your eyes, Ig; I’m turning it around!”

Ignatz obeys, his lips curling upward, eyes crinkled at the corners despite being lidded. There’s a low, timbered rumbling as Raphael presumably rotates his easel. When it stops, Ignatz becomes acutely aware of Raphael’s heavy breathing, in and out, but slowing down as the man steels himself. 

“Alright,” Raphael starts, mumbling with all the sound of a field mouse. “You can look.”

“You’re really building this up, Raph,” Ignatz laughs, his eyes slowly opening. 

But now it’s Ignatz whose mouth is gaping. His hand goes to his chest, his palm canted against his sternum. The painting is a person; that much is clear, even if the work is a tad crude. They’re a bit lanky, but that might just be because Raphael only used one brush size. Their skin is rather pale--the cream colored paint from when Raphael started, maybe. But there’s a telltale olive green cloak that’s fastened with a gaudy, golden clasp and a feather on the left shoulder. And the hair on his head is--perhaps a bit _too_ green, but--

It’s definitely Ignatz.

Raphael’s hands are folded awkwardly in front of his stomach, his thumbs doing little loops around each other. “When I asked you what I should paint, you said--” he starts, though the words get caught in his throat, and he struggles to swallow them back down. “You said to paint something pretty.”

Ignatz can’t speak. His mouth is still open, but his vocal cords are paralyzed, and his face feels wet, and he realizes that _oh, I’m crying._

“Sorry, Ig… I know, it’s bad,” Raphael starts, but Ignatz stops him with a finger to his lips.

“It’s perfect,” Ignatz says. “Even if I’m not convinced about the _beauty_ of your subject.”

Now it’s Raphael’s turn to interrupt as he takes both of Ignatz’s hands into his own. “You _are_ beautiful.” He pauses for a moment. “Can I kiss you?”

“I-I’ve never--”

“I can just… kiss your forehead, if that’s easier,” Raphael mutters, looking toward the ground.

Ignatz thinks that the Goddess must’ve propelled his head forward, because he certainly didn’t have the courage to meet Raphael’s lips with his own. Raphael’s eyes widen before he leans into the kiss, his chapped lips--warm and kind. When they finally tear away, Ignatz sees that Raphael is crying too.

“Hey Raph,” he sniffles, their heads still close together. “Can I keep this?”

Raphael presses a soft kiss to Ignatz’s forehead. “Of course, Ig. Of course.”

* * *

“Ignatz, you got paint on your cheek,” Hilda remarks, dipping her spoon into her stew. 

Ignatz sighs. “I’m aware, Hilda. This stuff takes a long time to come off.”

Her eyes drift to the giant man next to Ignatz. “And Raphael has some under his eyes. But why would…” And then she notices their hands laced together under the table.

“Holy _shit_ \--” she exclaims with a giddy smile. Suddenly, she’s off her bench and speeding towards the head of the alliance: “Claude, you owe me 50G!”


End file.
